Tag Archives: Jesus

Now that I’ve lived with Hindus for the past three years, it’s odd to me when I hear Westerners talking about reincarnation.

For many in the West, it seems like reincarnation has become something of a game. People seem delighted to “discover” who their “previous selves” were. Apparently, according to wikihow, there are three easy options to figuring out who you were in previous lives. Another site bills discovering your earlier identities as a “strange but wonderful” experience.

Reincarnation in the land from which the idea originated is anything but a “strange but wonderful” to be played with. For every Hindu I’ve discussed reincarnation with, it’s a more troubling and even terrifying belief. For a Hindu – reincarnation means failure. Reincarnation means you’ve missed entry into eternal bliss yet again. Reincarnation means another lifetime (or more) consigned to the suffering and bondage that is life in this world.

While there are some quixotic aspects to the idea even here (you haven’t seen a romantic movie until you’ve seen the same couple fall in love over two or three or four (!) reincarnated lifetimes) – really the only thing you need to know about your previous lives is that they were failures. You failed to live well enough to fulfill your earthly duties and get enough good works on your side to obtain salvation.

Where’s the fun in that?

At the risk of sounding like a heretic, I think there’s one thing reincarnation gets right. It’s not the multiple lives or serial attempts to earn your way to freedom from cycles of suffering – it’s the palpable sense that this life is a wash. It was a failure from the start. It’s unredeemable until you can manage to start again.

The West is more optimistic. We like our self-help, self-improvement sections of the bookstore and the 3-minute news segments proclaiming a new way to be-and-have-it-all. “New life” is a concept tied more to moving to an exotic local, getting a dream job, or dying your hair an adventurous color. We like the idea of being reincarnated to start over – we’d just prefer to do it as many times before death as we can.

Into the self-assured self-improvement attempts of the West and the surrender to cycles of birth into bondage of the East, Jesus speaks the same message: “You must be born again.”

The Easterner’s heart quickens – this they know. Of course you must be born again. They’ve been saying that since long before Jesus! But Jesus isn’t simply stating a fact of universal bondage to “trying again”. He’s saying you can have a new, spiritual life – one guaranteed salvation and drenched in liberty – right now. At this very moment. No waiting, no death, no more lifetimes of trying.

The Westerner’s eyes narrow. We’d prefer to think we just need to improve what we’ve got. A little time at the gym, or some help from a support group. But here’s Jesus talking about rebirth – a gift that means you’ve got to start over completely. A rebirth at the very center of your being. A new life pulsating in the secret places you keep hidden under all that stuff and status and self-esteem. No more attempts to shore up the pieces of yourself fragmenting from a center that (you’d prefer not to admit) isn’t whole.

To be reincarnated means to have failed. Westerners hope that failure can be mitigated with rigorous self-attention in this life; Easterners wait for the next life to see if their attempts to break the cycle were at all effective. To both, Jesus says there’s a better rebirth possible than you have been able to imagine.

I saw a lot of human anger yesterday.Screaming, tears, words flung that stick deeply in the back.Hurts dredged up from years ago – their cumulative weight crushing thoughts of reconciliation.Spirits crouched like a wounded animal, alternatively licking its wounds and lunging at anyone coming close.Words urging forgiveness brushed away with recitations of offense.The best resolution thought possible – “I just won’t speak to her anymore” – ends in screaming.Five long hours a scant sentence in the story of lifelong feud.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us

He had every right to be angry with me.I was born screaming at Him, fighting, irreverence flung in His face.Pretending He’d done something wrong – blaming Him for the offenses of people.And while my spirit crouched defensively, ready to snap whenever He came close, His spirit was busy finding a way to reconciliation.Every time I brushed away His forgiveness with recitations of my own efforts, He re-extended His hand full of grace.

Your anger has turned away and you have comforted me

Perhaps it is because this is so unlike human anger that it startles me each time I read it.He doesn’t just call a silent truce, resolving simply not to speak with me.He stills His anger, turns and embraces me.The fight drains out of my stiffened, arching spirit.I expect a recitation of my offenses, but He Whispers something about a deep, deep sea and hugs me closer.While I watch Him cautiously, waiting for the first hint of accusation, He points tearfully at a cross.“All that,” He whispers, “all that for this reconciliation. All that for peace between us.”

By the end of her story, we know we’re supposed to side with her. Jesus does and we like to be on his good side. But if I’m honest – I have to say I much prefer the rules. The standards that allow me to judge and feel better about myself. The lists that keep me feeling like I’ll be able to attain holiness one day.

Instead, this woman bursts into the dinner party of the town’s head Pharisee and ruins everything. She charges into a home where she knows she is not welcome. She makes herself conspicuous to the judgments always whispered when she passes by. She kneels in front of Jesus and her love for him bursts out – running over his feet, caught up in her hair.

It is a passion Christians say we want to have – but that we rarely experience. Instead, we fake passion with rules. We say passion means the number of times a week you read your Bible. The number of church services you attend. The things you should pray for and the way you should pray them. And when you don’t feel like it, we tell you it’s a battle against the flesh and you’ve just got to grit your teeth and do it anyway. Try harder. Work more. Maybe one day, you’ll stumble across the passion.

I am a fantastic teeth-gritter.

I am an expert rule-writer and rule-follower.

I am in-control and I am a “good person”.

And I have never manufactured passion like hers.

The room fills with the scent of perfume as she pours it on his feet. She marvels that she is here in His presence.

Jesus is speaking, telling a story of two men who both owed a debt – one large and one small. Both debts were forgiven, and Jesus wants Simon the Pharisee to tell him which man will love the one who was owed and who forgave the debt more.

Simon’s answer and mine are spoken with the same, controlled, cold tone of voice. Of course we know it is the one who was forgiven much. Yet neither one of us wants to admit what that really means. Neither one of us wants to look Jesus full in the face and find such staggering forgiveness there that we will be reduced to tears at his feet. Neither one of us wants to lose the safety of the standards, the predictability of the rules.

But then there is she. She is hearing that her sins have been forgiven. She is hearing she can go in peace. She is overwhelmed by a passion the rest of us are too exhausted to fake anymore.

And until we let go of attempts to earn it, until we look Jesus full in the face and allow His forgiveness to wash over us, we will never know her passion.